United States or Curaçao ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
We were near a group of farm buildings and, going inside, found that former occupants had left elaborate records of their visits. Among other mural decorations were some rough sketches drawn by Captain Bairnsfather, which afterward became famous as "Fragments from France." This suggests another interesting field for speculation.
But if you do not want to establish anything, if you merely want to find out something, statistics are no use at all. You are driven to other ways of getting at the truth, ways much less definite and accurate. I wish there were more pictures of army chaplains. There are a few. I do not recollect that Bairnsfather ever gave us one, but they turn up from time to time in the pages of Punch.
This is the place which Bairnsfather speaks of as the hotel at which one could live and go to war every day and I afterward did that very thing, for one day; leaving the front-line trenches in the morning, having a good dinner at the Fauçon and being back in the front line at night. That happened to be Thanksgiving Day; November 25, 1915.
The mail, of course, kept us happy where nothing else could, for not only was it the single link with home and all that it meant, but it brought us newspapers which, while carefully avoiding all reference to the armies in the East, did tell us of the war as they waged it in France. Also, it introduced Bairnsfather to us.
I ha' no doot that I might have improved upon the shelter that I found, had I had time to pick and choose. But any shelter was good just then, and I was glad of mine, and of a chance to catch my breath. Afterward, I saw a picture by Captain Bairnsfather that made me laugh a good deal, because it represented so exactly the way I felt.
"Where are you living, Bairnsfather?" said the Colonel to me. "I don't know, sir," I replied. The Colonel thought for a moment: "You'd better come along back to the farm on the road for to-night anyway, and you can spend to-morrow decorating the walls with a few sketches," he said.
It was the roughest crossing I've ever experienced, and there was no time to indulge in "that periscope feeling," so aptly described by Bairnsfather; we were too busy exercising Christian Science on our "innards" and trying not to think of all the indigestible things we'd eaten the night before! We rose on mountains of waves one moment and then descended into positive valleys the next.
"Where's that right-hand gun of yours, Bairnsfather?" he asked. "Down on the right of Number 2 trench, sir," I answered; "just by the two willows near the sap which runs out towards Number 1." "It's not much of a place for it," he said; "where we ought to have it is to the right of the sap, so that it enfilades the whole front of that trench." "When do you want it moved, sir?" I asked.
The humorous side of tunnelling is so pronounced that, could "Bairnsfather" view one such episode, our bookstalls would shortly be surrounded by eager crowds, clamouring for the first edition of "Fragments from Germany," depicting mud-bespattered "Old Bills" crawling for their very lives down narrow tunnels, closely pursued by the wily Hun!
"Yes, sir, there is," came through the blanket, and getting up he went to the table at the other end of the tent. He sleepily handed me the wire: "Lieutenant Bairnsfather to proceed to join his battalion as machine-gun officer...." "What time do I have to push off?" I inquired. "By the eight o'clock from Havre to-morrow, sir." Time now 3 a.m.
Word Of The Day